Choosing your first guitar
People ask me all the time, when they are about to start, what kind of guitar they should buy? You have a few choices, but let’s divide it into 2 basic categories:
Electric Guitar or Acoustic Guitar.
In the “electric” category we can find different choices to consider. The first one is the style of music you want to play on your guitar.
Electric guitar is best for pop, rock, blues, alternative,country, metal but you should also consider that the learning materials that you are going to find, related to electric guitars are more oriented to scales, exercises, tricks and guitar solos. In other words, electric guitar learning material is going to take more effort on your side.
There are also, different types of electric guitars. Basic, with tremolo, even 7 string guitars, smaller size for young children, etc.
If you are just starting, an electric guitar with a floating bridge (Floyd Rose type bridge) is going to be really hard to tune, compared to a regular electric guitar. In my newsletter I will be writing an entire article on electric guitars. Register your e-mail for updates.
In acoustic guitar, we have 2 basic choices:
The “classical guitar” which comes with nylon strings and is your best choice if you like to sing and just play chords or seriously study classical music. The styles that better match the classical guitar are: pop, soft rock, ballads, rhythm guitar styles, bossa nova and classical of course.
The second basic choice is “folk guitar” or “Steel-string Guitar” which is acoustic but comes with steel strings.
The sound is much brighter and louder than the classical guitar (nylon strings). The down side is that steel strings get corroded pretty fast if your fingers tend to sweat.
As a result, you will need to change strings more often (every 2 months or so, if you are not a performing artist) but the benefit of a nice bright sound is worth it. Pop, rock, blues, alternative and country are the best match for the steel-string guitar.
You can also find electro-acoustic guitars. They are the same as acoustic guitars with the extra feature of an output connection to plug into an amplifier (amp) so you can have a louder sound to perfom in public. They come with nylon strings or steel strings. Modern electro-acoustic guitars even include a tuner built in the body of the guitar. This is a great feature to consider.
Check out this AMAZON ONLINE CATALOGUE where you can shop online to find hundreds of Guitars and all kinds of accesories.
You are also welcome to visit my Guitar Hero blog with a lot of Guitar Hero stuff.
Alvaro Avila Guitar Teacher
Beginner Guitar Lessons Online
Learn more by subscribing to my newsletters and receive 4 free videos from the Guitarsimple video course:
[...] Choosing your first guitar Learnmore by subscribing to [...]
how can i subsribe to this site?